Modern Wisdom - #991 - Dr John Delony - The Blueprint for Better Relationships & a Peaceful Life

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Dr. John Delony is a mental health expert, author, YouTuber, and speaker. How you we build a thriving relationship in the modern world? With constant distractions and endless options at our fingertips, trust between partners can feel harder than ever. So what does it really take to create a relationship rooted in trust, intimacy, and growth in today’s world? Sponsors: See me on tour in America: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live⁠ See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get up to $350 off the Pod 5 at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Timestamps: (0:00) Should Your Spouse Know Your Passwords? (10:53) Why is Safety So Important in Relationships? (20:21) How Can We Solve for Peace? (28:42) Why Do Men Not Feel Good Enough? (32:44) How Can Women Make Their Partners Feel More Worthy? (35:33) Using Truth and Accountability to Build a New Relationship (39:16) What are the Biggest Female Dilemmas? (44:41) Can Infidelity Be Forgiven? (57:30) The Greatest Parenting Advice (01:01:16) Making Head vs Heart Decisions in a Relationship (01:04:30) How to Live Through Grief (01:09:11) Why Should We Live an Optimistic Life? (01:13:19) Do Kids Fix Everything? (01:25:47) How to Be a Better Version of Yourself (01:37:06) The Most Important Decision You’ll Ever Make is Your Spouse (01:47:20) Find Out More About John Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you are married, your spouse should have all of the codes to your phones, email accounts, and you should have theirs, period. If your spouse isn't trustworthy or safe, you need to head directly into this challenge. ASAP, you are worthy of safety and peace. If you're hiding things from your spouse, let today be your independence day from secret, shame, and fear, you are worth finally taking a full deep breath. How did people respond to that? Not well, man. Let's go. Not well, dude. Not well at all. The idea that privacy and secrecy are the same thing.

They've been conflated, and I think it's madness. I think it's madness. If you will create a human with somebody, but you won't give them the code to your phone, I can't think of anything more insane. That's insane. There's a lot of dissonance going on there. Dissinence is like a kind way to say it.

It's madness. It's madness. That is why. Yeah, the number of folks that call into my show that are like, hey, I can't, I'm not going to give her my phone. And it's like, why? Like, what is on that thing? It's like, well, it's mine. It's like, well, what is so, what, what are you hiding, right? And I think every, every major pathology ends up, secrets fuel that, right? It's gasoline for pathology. And so, man, if you can't have a place in your life with the person your ride or die

with, you can say, like, can you, can you check out my phone and get this picture off my phone? if that causes you pause or worse if your partner won't do that yeah man you gotta have that conversation like now yeah why does that sound crazy does that sound crazy I don't think so I'm an old married man so maybe it maybe it doesn't occur to it would have

it would have done to me 10 years ago but that's because there was loads of shit on my phone that I didn't want my girlfriend that's it that's it that's it whereas now I don't care I don't there that I need to be worried about yeah so I what blows my mind is that conflation that privacy issue that privacy versus honesty thing so people so my wife's a coach and I work in mental health right so people are

flying in all the time to stay at our house for a few days and then or we'll go out into the country where I've got a place and people stay I'll tell my wife hey I'm going out someone's coming in so that's private but it's not I'm not I'm not saying like hey uh right I'm going to go run an errand, right? And so, and she has clients, right? But the idea that, I don't know, I think they're conflated, and I think that's madness. I think it's madness.

One interesting thing is the openness to give your partner, your devices and email accounts and messages and social media and all that sort of stuff actually acts a little bit like a guardrail for your behavior as well. Of course, of course. There's always stuff that's kind of ambiguous. Yeah. Some chick replies to your Instagram story.

Right. Or it's somebody from your past that is associated with an ex or party or whatever. Like, you know, there's a million ways that this could go. Your behavior with that person can be the beginning of just a little bit. It's a little sort of fissure or a crack. I got a ton of stick for saying that if guys want to. remain loyal to their partner, but they've struggled to keep their dick in their pants in the past. It's a bad idea for them to go out to a nightclub and drink with their friends until three

in the morning. And the implication, it was, both people didn't like that. On one side, the guys didn't like it because it felt controlling. And the girls didn't like it because it sounded like the guys were only loyal due to a lack of options. I'm like, look, if you're a mild version of a guy that likes cocaine, but he's trying to quit, being in a house with no cocaine is a fucking wonderful solution to that. It's way easier to avoid temptation than it is to resist it. And you can be the most loyal guy in the world. But if you're 15 beers deep and the wrong night with the wrong thing and he kind of didn't know what was going on and this is a terminal, like an existential problem that you've found yourself in now, just remove yourself from the situation. It's way easier. And it's kind of the same

with this that if you and your partner have this level of honesty, transparency, openness, where you're just sharing each other's social media accounts back and boy. It's like, can you just see if such and such has message me? It's like, what's this fucking group chat with like, it's just dick pics? It's like, yeah, I know, I know like, it's the boys. Like, as opposed to, oh, I hope she doesn't

open that message on the thing. And it works in reverse, like you establish trust. I've got friends literally that we grew up on the same street in Houston, in Texas. Same street since we were zero. She doesn't get into those text threads.

Like, she may see the thread pop up and she knows. Or when I see something, if I grab her phone, it'll get directions somewhere and text threads come from her college roommates. I don't open it, right? A, because I have full trust, but B, there's some, there's private things. But they're not secrets, right?

And she could. And, you know what I mean? But like, have you seen that video? It's a girl driving in a car. She's in the passenger seat. And it's captioned below, this guy's presumably saying, can I check your text messages? And she goes, hands him the phone.

She goes, can I look at your social media accounts? He goes, hands him the phone. It says, can I look at your chat GPT history? And she throws the phone out of the one. I think it's this, I want to have the benefits of a fully anchored partner, but I don't want to put all of myself on the table. I don't put both feet in that boat and you can't have one without the other

Can you explain that a bit more deeply? Yeah, so I want the benefits of being fully seen and fully known and fully celebrated and but I don't want you to see all of me and so it's a hedge and if you've got past traumas, you got past relationship, you got burned and all that the hedge makes sense

but you can't hope for all of this, right? It's like I want to get in great shape but I just don't want to mess with the diet part. like you can do that you're not going to see the results you want and we blame the other person for that it's like we're going after the food companies now we're going after the colors in my skittles

or like I mean man we're going down rabbit holes dude at the end of the day if I want to go fully into this then I got to go fully in and if I don't then I have to own that I didn't want to go fully into that yeah you get what I'm saying and there is some there's blame and there's pressure and yeah I get that

but you have to say if I want want the benefit of this, I got to go all in, which means you got a risk getting hurt, bad, man. Because if you are not all in, there's always this thing in the back of your mind that said, well, you know, I wasn't rejected. Because that wasn't me. It's a heads, man. It's just 60% me, 90% me, but 10% was on my career. 10% was on my friends or 10% was on that orbiting. That's not how it goes. It is, 10% is you weren't trustworthy or you were going to use this against me. And so I start to weaponize the same person I'm in the boat with, right? And when I've got a foot on the side here, I like to poke them. Yeah, just either get in or don't get in.

Well, I think that. And it goes, by the way, you're nuts if you meet somebody. You're like, hi, my name's John. Here's all my stuff. That makes you psychotic, right? But once you cross those lines and say, hey, this is for real, we're going to make a run at this, or we're all in, or you're standing at the aisle. Also, you can be all in at varying levels. right you can correct at the very first date it's like there is a appropriate level of disclosure at each different stage yeah but you can max out that disclosure as you go along as opposed to purposefully tampering that down right so yeah i think that there's people who are all in in relationships and i think there's people who aren't and the people who aren't should get together

and the people who are should get together and the problems occur when one group dates the other that's fantastic huh you think yeah that's the love island right those who can't like just go Go. You all stay there. Yeah. You know I was on Love Island, right? No. No, you weren't really?

I was the first person threw the doors of season one. You didn't know this? No. I thought that's what you got the joke from. No! I wish I was that savvy. The first person threw the doors of season one.

Did you win? No. No, I didn't. How do you win? I've never even seen an episode. You, it's like a vote thing toward the end. It's like popularity contest, public popularity contest toward the end of each couple. Is it like Big Brother?

Yeah, basically. It's a couple of Big Brother. Okay, kind of. and 24 hours a day, you're surveilled by cameras and stuff. That was a, fuck it, that was a real, that was 10 years ago. 10 years ago, this summer, I was on. That would have been a way better joke if I'd known that. Well, you doubled up.

Well, there we go. Edit this part out. You're right, because the, even within Love Island, you see that there's people in there who are a very small cohort of people, and they usually don't stay very long, that are actually in there trying to find a life part. And then the rest of them are just trying to play the game. So I think this would be a great analysis for some. to do. If someone that's watching that's got too much time on their hands, if you can take every

couple that finished the show of Love Island, UK and US, and then track how long, either how long they say together or just basically what the attrition rate is, I guess the attrition rate for couples that finished Love Island in a couple is over 95%. I think that, like, maybe one in 20 couples, or less, probably less than 95 like would have been able to stick together. Are there any

that are still together from those original seasons? I literally can't think of any. Tommy Fury and Molly May were the two like, with the big. Tommy Fury of the Boxer? Yeah, yeah, he was on as well.

It's an illustrious history in the UK. But they separated. But now they're back together. Okay. So, I mean, hardly a gold standard relationship. Had a kid. Kids like 18 months old.

separated, got back together, public break, all this bullshit. So, but yeah, I really think there's two cohorts of people. There's people who are all in in relationships and those that aren't. And the problem occurs when one group dates the other. If you're dating somebody or if you were married to somebody and they won't show you their phone, I would head straight to a therapist office because that to me is a huge sign. That's a huge sign that there's some, or maybe not to be a therapist office, but at least sit at a table across from each other and say we got to put this issue on the table because there's

something going on there that person has to feel safe with you talk to me about safety what's it mean why is it important i don't think you can have a relationship without safety and without trust but i think safety says i can say what i want put that on the table and you'll be curious about it you want to hurt me with it or it means i can say i'm interested in and it basically says I can be me and you won't weaponize me against me. Give me an example. I'm a physician and I'm not, but let's say I was a physician

and my wife gets accustomed to a life. We're living a life as a doctor's house and I increasingly get frustrated with the HMO system and I am taking yoga on the weekends and I'm like, man, I'm going to be a yoga instructor and one day I come home and say, I think I want to quit medicine and I want to do yoga, right? Safety would say,

that person will instantly say, you know what that's going to cost me. And somebody who is safe would say, tell me more about that. And we might get to a place where I need to go see somebody. I'm not doing well. I don't like the system. I want to start thinking about their careers, but at least it would be met with curiosity, not with instant. I'm going to weaponize this against you. You know what I'm saying? That may be a bad analogy. But it is Taking the things that you want, and I'll even go as far. I don't like to say this in relationships. I'm going to say the things I need, and I'm not going to use that against you.

Right. One of the things, we talked about last, like one of the things, when I'm on the road, I just like my wife to call every once in a while. She did last night. This was the funniest thing. So we're sad to dinner. We're so fucking funny, dude. We're sad at dinner.

And your phone goes and you luck and it was your wife. Did you red button her? Or did you just like to hang out? Yeah, because she knows I don't answer my phone when I'm. at a meal with trends. Did you actually red buttoned her?

What does that mean? Like you cancelled the call or did you just let it ring out? I don't remember. I can't remember either. Anyway, I have a thing about, I try to touch my phone

when I'm at dinner. Your phone rings. You see that it's your wife. This is something that you've asked her to do because you like to know that she is thinking about you to the point where she'll ring you. Yeah.

You watched her sorry come up and then just went back to talk at those the funniest thing. I called her right when I got into the car. But but she doesn't say when I get home how dare you ask me to call you all you ever want me to do is to reach out

she knows hey that's one way that my husband likes to feel loved when he's on the road like because he gets lost in the sea of travel and whatever and she doesn't weaponize it against me however small that might be right why is safety so important I mean that's Maslow's 101 dude you can't you can't fully exhale until you're safe

Whether you're safe physically, whether you're safe professionally, whether you're safe relationally, you can't exhale. I think it's a core human need. Do you agree with that or no? Absolutely. Yeah. I wish I could be more sophisticated. I think that's wired into like small tribes of people.

Like I have to know my tribes with me. If your tribe gets up and leaves and you wake up next morning and they're gone, you know you're not going to live, right? I think that's wired into us at our core, core, core. How do you think it's built in a relationship? What's safety? It's practiced. It's practiced from the moment I meet you.

Will you open the door for me? Are you going to pick up the bill? Are you going to respond when I text back? If I say, hey, I don't like that. Are you going to when the waiter comes and says, no, we're good, right? It's built piece by piece by piece. Or, hey, text me when you get home, you don't text. Like, that's practicing safety or not practicing safety.

And that can be get a conversation. Hey, you didn't text me last time when you got home. I can't stay and feeling like I'm confined. Like, I can't stand. That's when you get to have a conversation about honesty and integrity. I don't like feeling like I have a chore when I get done meeting with somebody. Ooh, I really like when somebody calls. We can have that conversation.

And then you've got something in tension which you need to navigate. That's exactly right. Otherwise, it becomes, was that, the old postman quote, if I don't say anything. Oh, unspoken expectations of premeditated resentment. That's right. If I don't say anything, and I feel like I got a chore every time I leave, then I'm going to start resenting you, right? So just compatibility in one way between two people look a lot like

what you need to feel safe and what I am prepared to do in a relationship, work well together? Because you can imagine a world in which getting a text, good night is a really important part when you're a part to make you feel good. That's something you want for the other person that feels massively constricting. And if you just build a little. lots of these things up over time, one person really wants a thing, the other person cannot deliver that without it feeling like a huge sacrifice on that part. Is that what

incompatibility is or compatibility? Yeah, but I still like to distill it down to a choice. Right. Like I get to choose to be inconvenienced and I'm going to text you, right? Or I like to choose, I get to choose. If it's that big of a deal, I need to go look in the mirror and ask myself, why do I feel so constrictive when this person says, hey, will you just check in? Why do I feel, I would need to sit down with my wife

if she's like, I just can't call you at 9 o'clock. She goes to bed real early. Like, I just can't call you. Like, we would need to have that conversation, right? Because she would be choosing to not call. But yeah, that is compatibility. That's compatibility versus incompatibility.

I like that. It is, I'm putting down what I want. Will you choose to do this or not do this? Well, I mean, super compatibility would be something like, this is something that I really want. And the other person going, I love to give that.

I absolutely love to give that as opposed to... Yeah, but that switches, right? It... I think you have to be careful with the initial feeling of that. Because you hear about that all the time. Like, we love to do this when we're dating, and now that we're married, you don't love to do that.

So I think it's continually not saying what I want to do or what I really feel like I... It's, will I serve you? That's true. I understand, but there is a degree of how heavy is the weight for somebody to make that choice. Absolutely.

It's way easier for somebody to be like flying with a tailwind than flying into a headwind with this stuff. Absolutely. But I want the person on the other end of that to own that, not to blame, right? What's the difference there? Let's say that you've got two people who have, one person really wants a thing,

the other person really struggles to deliver it without it being a super heavy weight that they have to pick up. It's just not their love language or whatever it might be. How does that? I think the, I think the, the, the, the, The current cultural narrative is everything relationally that makes me uncomfortable, I have to

blame you for it, for needing this or wanting this. And all I want people to do is to say, in this relationship, I don't want to. I don't feel safe doing it. I don't like doing it. I don't want to do it. And I want people to own that instead of lobbying their grenade over the fence. What would lobbying the grenade over the fence be? Coming up with sophisticated dating dynamic articles and posting them in the Times, that might be one, right? It might be. be running you down, weaponizing it against you, right? You always need me to call. You always need me to call. You always need me to call. Instead of saying, I get so tired at night and I put the kids to bed, I just crash. I'm choosing that. And then we need to have that hard conversation, right? And then

I can go. She loves me. She's falling asleep at 9 o'clock. She's running the whole house with me on the road. I'm a big boy. I'll be all right. It's another version of trust. It's another part of I don't have these weird little secrets. These bits of me that I feel shame around. that I'm not prepared to show you. I'm not prepared. I don't feel sufficiently safe for me to be able to say I get tired after I put the kids to bed.

That's it. That's it. But that's a you. That's me. That's I. I'm putting that on the table versus I'm going to perpetually blame everybody else for my discomfort.

I'm going to say, I don't like this. I don't feel comfortable with this. Or I've got all these other things and I crash. You can choose to interpret that as, I don't love you, but I do.

I really do. And then I get to be the big boy and others at the table and decide what I want to do with those feeling. But it's just about taking ownership of it, right? I've been using eight sleep for years and I genuinely can't imagine life without it. Having a mattress that actively cools and heats.

Each side of the bed is a total game changer. And the newest model, the Pod 5, takes things to the next level. It now includes a temperature-regulating duvet that works with the smart mattress cover to deliver full-body climate control, maintaining your ideal temperature from every angle all night long. The new base also includes a built-in speaker so you can fall asleep to ambient sound rainfall or Dr. Andrew Huberman, whatever, helps you switch off. And with upgraded biometric sensors, it now runs nightly health checks, identifying disrupted

breathing, abnormal heartbeats or sudden changes in your HRV. It now cools, heats, elevates, and monitors your sleep better than ever, which is why 8 sleep has been clinically proven to give you up to one hour more of quality sleep every night. And if you're still on the fence, they have a 30-day sleep trial. So you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. And if you don't like it, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally.

Right now, you can get up to $350 off the pod five by going to the link in the description below. I'm heading to 8Sleep.com slash Modern Wisdom and using the code Modern Wisdom at checkout. That's E-I-G-H-T-Sleep.com slash Modern Wisdom and Modern Wisdom, a checkout. What are some of the powerful but non-obvious ways that safety gets degraded? I think in two ways.

One, if somebody has the courage to put that on the table and the other person hears it and metabolizes it, and then I'm going to say choose this to not, it gets degraded in that way. And I think it gets degraded in big ways. Like you sleep with somebody else, but it gets degraded often little by little by little by little. Or the other way it gets degraded is you don't say anything. And right, you, your partner comes in on their phone all the time, all the time, all the time. Well, they set it down and then you take the phones and you put them away. right? And then they go get it. Well, you didn't say, hey, it bugs me when you walk in and you're still carrying your work day on the phone or you're still just swiping when you walk in the door. Instead of saying that and then dealing with what happens when you put that on the table, you try to act your way to it, right? And it goes back to that resentment part. But trust is, I don't trust myself with you or I don't trust, I'm not safe enough to put this on the table, or you're going to take this and weaponize it or you're just going to disregard it. which is messy. Is this related to solving for peace? That's, yeah. I don't want to go to bed at night knowing I didn't say a thing. And I need to go to bed at night knowing I said that thing with somebody who wasn't going to weaponize it against me. Dig into the solving.

That's just basic honor and indignity, right? Dig into the solving for peace thing for me. It's a, it's probably, I'm probably pathological with it. because my whole my whole job is talking with like highly dysregulated people well it's that but it's like hey man i've got seven dude this may be you i don't know i've got um it's it's the instagramification of like finance stuff i've got 17 like passive income properties that are leveraged 140% right and i've got this and i've got this and i'm moving this around and let me put it this way

here's one i get so much grief for paying off i think my mortgage was 3.0 maybe dude i just got abused online what an idiot you don't know how to do math like you're such a fool right because you could have put that in a basic high yield savings account and it's like dude i it's a sleep tax that's what i call it like i put my head on my pillow knowing nobody can take my house away and we don't have a psychology for that in this culture it's all about amplification and it's all on paper money versus they can't take your house dude and it just different people will have different priorities of course yeah yeah and for for me it was that right yeah of course if you grew up it doesn't it need to be some fucking childhood ancestral trauma

that's something simply i have i have a story in my mind that's from somewhere that's it maybe outside and maybe inside that i really want i know that my dad my mom and dad paid the house off maybe in the mid the mid fifties and i i don't think i've ever seen my dad as proud of something where he said you know i'm mortgage free it's mine totally mortgage free yeah yeah yeah and they there was no expedited bullshit like you're paying it off at 40 times the pace that you're supposed right right right right normally uh this was chugging away on a 25 year mortgage chipping some shit like that and then they get to the end of it and yeah it's it's solving for peace relational solving for peace financially solving for peace professionally right like man the the number of

folks I work with that are just they're just melting and I always want to ask like for what man like what do you for what like well you know like most I tried to be uh cute with Jordan Peters at one time I was like nobody can answer that question for what and he he clapped back in the right way he was he said uh of course that's the hardest question to answer cycle like for what What do you want? And, yeah, I think it took me, it's taking me a long time to get there. But for me in my house, man, I want peace. And we'll go from there.

Yeah, I think that a good part of this is explained by this wonderful quote I had. So I had Adam Lane Smith on. Have you seen him? Oh, yeah, yeah. I know, Adam. Yeah. So Adam, I think, would be another one for the... The attachment guy.

Round table fucking super crazy bullshit stuff. He just had this wonderful fucking insight around complexity. So you said that your life is, your issue in life is not that it's too busy, but that it's too complex. Your system is built for hard work, not for complexity. And his argument is that you can deal with any workload as long as it's sufficiently simple and linear enough. And I kind of get the sense with the peace versus war thing, too, that if there is a really, really heavy weight, but there's just one of them or two of them, Probably super easy. That's why you got two hands.

Or if there's a purpose for it. You'll carry it forever if there's a purpose for it. But complexity, yeah, that's still. Teleb was somebody, I told you, I got obsessed with when it came to complex systems. And instead of dealing with reality, we just makes it more complex. We make it more complex.

And we duct tape and nail another, you know, we jack up this side and shove a brick under it. And it just means that when the thing does fall, which all complex systems do, it will just have higher to fall, right? I've got a good story about this. So I ruptured my Achilles. Oh, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, gnarly.

How long did I put you out? Full 12 months. That was actually five years ago. That's interesting. I did Love Island 10 years ago, and the halfway point between then and now to the day was the day that I ruptured my Achilles. So that's an interesting arc.

Playing cricket, rupture my Achilles. and this weekend, I didn't think, you know, this is during COVID. It was a brief interlude where the number had come down and everyone was able to go outside and I was playing sport. I go into the hospital, they do the diagnosis on it. They say, you need to come back in 13 days. We're going to open you up and stitch you back together. By the way, there's some painkillers go fuck off.

I'd driven my car to the cricket ground. After that, I needed to go and collect a TV that I'd ordered to the supermarket so that I could put it in the new rental property I'd just brought. ready for the IKEA furniture builder guy to come in the next morning, open this stuff up because on the Monday it was the viewing day, it was the first day of photos, and then people were moving in three days later. And if I didn't, this huge cathedral-sized deck of cards that I'd built.

And one thing, you remember when the ever-given, you know, that huge Suez Max-sized tanker got stuck in the Suez Canal? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was there for six days or something, and the entire global supply chain is so finely tuned that one tanker for six days in one canal is able to ruin the entire billions and billions of dollars. They're probably still dealing with the repercussions of that in small ways now, four years later. That was what my life was like. And that's what my life is always, always like. I always think if one thing, if one spanner gets thrown in the works, there is no.

no wiggle room in the system and in some ways that allows you to maximize your time and that's really exciting it's thrilling that's it fucking squeezing everything out we're addicts all we're addicts to thrill yes but when shit comes and like you fuck i didn't i left foot i had an automatic car thankfully it was my right foot that went i left foot drove home from the fucking hospital which put everybody on the road at risk right yeah correct correct correct um yeah wild There's a, there's a, I believe there is a direct link between the rise in anxiousness and margin. And a lack of margin. Okay.

Financial margin, relational margin, home margin. But we have such an allergy to boredom. We have such an allergy to peace. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's an allergy. What are the most common issues that men call you about? Like, what do you wish more women knew about how men operated? man if I had to summarize the the male dilemma it's like what did what did what did what did I do and why don't people like me from my elementary school teachers to my parents to my doctors to my schools to my um dating prospects to my my collegiate education to my employers like to the to the media at large like what did I

I don't know why everybody doesn't like me. That's probably the most common question I get. Why doesn't my wife like me? What is it about me that's so inherently wrong? And there's a litany of reasons why. You don't do this. You're to this. You fill in the blank.

But that's the ultimate question. A lot of people like me. Belonging? No, it's worth, man. It's worth. It's that question of worth. I don't know many men and I don't live in the red pillosphere

or the whatever but like I don't know many men who don't want to be a net positive I just don't know them they just get the message at a very early age hey quit wiggling in class or something wrong with your brain hey don't say that so loud

hey don't be so aggressive don't be so running around don't be so don't be so you and ultimately that message it becomes part of your nervous system, which you walk into every situation. Like, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a burden on this room. I'm a burden on this family. I'm a burden on this workplace. I'm a burden on this culture. And we're at, we're at the tail end of a world where men can say, okay, I'll just,

I'll opt out. And then now we're blaming you for opting out, right? And so it's, it's a privilege to be able to opt out that that's quickly coming to an end. But yeah, there's this idea that I don't want to cause everybody around me all this pain. I'll just step out. And that's not a good solution either. But think about that worth question. I'm not worth going to the gym.

I'm not worth going to see a therapist. I'm not worth going back to school to get more education and get a new job. I'm not worth any of these other. The efforts it's going to take to go do something better, to go be something different. I'll just be quiet.

And I won't try. Why would I try? I'm not even worth the effort. And every time, I think many domesticated men, I don't know if you can say that, their homes are a failure factory, right? I want to help. Well, that's not how you do that. You need to do it like this and you need to do it like that. I remember a conversation with my wife, like, about helping.

And it occurred to me, oh, here's the underlying problem is, I sleep just fine with a dish, with with sink full of dishes. Like, I'll do the dishes when we're all out of dishes. And so she can count, like, I did the dishes five times this week. You did them once. And then she can rightfully say, I'm doing so much more work around here. And I could say, oh, I didn't know that. It didn't occur to me that work needed to be done.

So we have to do the alignment stuff up front. But if I'm walking around all the time, I can feel when I'm a burden in my house, when I'm in the way, right? And then I start to imagine them in the way everywhere. and so if we're looking at masculinity as an illness or if we're looking at men's problems as an illness then at least be compassionate enough to treat it that way right you and I were talking last night like men won't share their emotions now there's a whole new thing like men are too emotional we're the only ones who have to care like at some point man people just are going to say

I'm out I'm out and it's that will be the that would be not a good result what would your advice be to women on how they can make their partners feel more worthy? Man, it's a trope as old as time, but it's Bray Brown that says what you go looking for in the world you're sure to find. And I love the way she says that. Find one thing on a day-to-day basis. Dude, I made an app for that. Just a day-to-day practice. Find one thing that you can see. like hey i really see how hard you're working last night thank you for that or you came to bed at 10 instead of 2 a.m like man like you feel lighter today like find one thing begin to practice admiration even if you got a search for it man uh but it begins to send a message i like you i like you sometimes

it's as gentle as just putting your hand on somebody's arm right uh when you're driving instead of hey look there's a there's red light look out slap slow down We got to go left. Why aren't you going left? Turn the radio down. Just a gentle like, man, or a hand behind your neck, man. Just something that says, I'm glad you're here. I think we over-dramatized.

It's so small. It can be so small. Or thinking, that's not how I would have emptied the dishwasher, but he's a good man. You know what I mean? Or I can see thank you for that. Or that's not where the drying rack goes. Or that's not how you pack those kids' lunches. Or at this particular school.

school that school's nut free and this one's not and you put the granola bar on the man I'm so glad he's making lunches and then when I'm I've exhaled I can say quick reminder this you know what I mean but it's just I don't know it's just it's just saying I appreciate you I appreciate you and then having the courage to say here's here's a better way or here's another way before we continue if you haven't been feeling as sharp or energized as you'd like. Getting your blood work done is the best place to start, which is why I partnered with function because they run lab tests twice a year that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team of expert physicians that take the data, put it in a simple dashboard,

and give you actionable insights and recommendations to improve your health and lifespan. They track everything from your heart health to your hormone levels, your thyroid function, and nutrient deficiencies. They even screen for 50 types of cancer at stage one, which is five times more data than you get from an annual physical. Getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like this would usually cost thousands, but with function, it is only $500, and right now, the first thousand people can get an additional $100 off, meaning it's only $400 to get the exact same blood panel that I use. Just go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom.

That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. If you want to go on an adventure, if you want all of the things in your life to be fixed, just start telling the truth. And every time that I end up having a conversation about, like, relating within a couple, it just comes back to that. Well, I think there's another arc to it. I have to see you. And I can't see you through the lens that is my life.

And I think true relationship is I'm taking off the glasses that I see the world and I'm going to see you. And then that's going to allow me to practice knowing you. and if you will see and know that person and then tell the truth because I think you can weaponize truth also like I feel I feel you are telling the truth is let's just get there culturally

that'd be awesome right if we could just be honest with each other but relationally I have to see not the wet towels on the floor I have to see her and then I have to know her and know she did not put those towels there as a stab to the patriarchy

like what must have her day been like, I'm pick up those towels. You know what I mean? Because if you came and stayed at my house for two weeks and you left towels on the floor, I just pick them up because we're friends. Like I'll just pick them up and I'm like,

God, Chris, do you pick up your towels? But because she's my romantic partner, it has to be this big existential dramatic. How much of it's compounding as well that this is building up overtime? This is the towel. Yeah, you're right. It goes back to tell the truth.

It's last week, the thing the week before and it's unspoken expectations. Yeah. And also just pick up the towels, man. You know what I mean? Okay, so question on that. This sounds great, but I think a lot of people, especially that are in longer-term relationships, will feel like, this sounds wonderful when you're setting the tone three months

in or six months in. You're always setting the tone. But how do you have some sort of a breakwater if you've got a mountain-sized amount of unspoken expectations? words that haven't been said, premeditated resentments, that you need to somehow get out, and you go, okay, you had this conversation with your wife. This is a breakwater.

We need to move forward, build something. This marriage is over. Yeah. You're building a new one, yeah. Yeah. What does that look like? Someone says, I feel like this is the sort of relationship that I want inside of the relationship that I'm in,

but it's not the relationship we have. and there is a big backlog of stuff that neither of us have said to each other. How does someone navigate that? I think you start by writing down all the eyes, all the stuff that I brought to that mountain. Because it's really easy to go to that mountain and be like, you've been doing this,

you've been doing this, I'm going to sit down and say, I've become a person that I don't like inside of my own marriage, inside of my own long-term relationship, and I want to work with you to build something there. And then you have to hope that they're willing to put their stuff on the table too

instead of weaponizing what you just put on the table. That's a tough, scary place to be. But I think the reality is... Is they going to say, well, you remember what you told me that you did this thing, like, that's a thing, right? But here's the thing. That marriage is over. That relationship's over.

When you get that mountain back, when you have that moment, it has to be different, that thing's got a period at the end of it. And so you may let it run out of gas until the volcano explodes. It's going to explode, right? So I can do it now with I, and you can weaponize the eye, and then we're going to end up in a divorce court somewhere, or we can just let it do its thing. But it's there now. And so you might as well be a person of integrity while the thing's happening. What about the opposite? What should men know about how women operate? What are the things that women are calling in and saying to you most frequently?

Some of my women colleagues disagree with me on this. And so I'll caveat this with that, but I think women were sold to bill of goods also. And the question that pops into my head is, why won't he change? But I think the deeper question is, I did all of these things that they said and why don't I feel better about me

or my world or my the life i've constructed for myself and what are the most common things that they have done that have not born i waited this many years to have kids i waited till i was financially secure waited till i had a career i waited until i was on my own two feet i got this level of success i or the opposite i went all in on this relationship at a very young age i went fully all in I think the meta message has been, if you will do these things or the tradwife thing or the full CEO thing, whichever one it is, that somehow you're going to feel complete on the other end of this deal. And that feeling is elusive. It just keeps moving. And so there's a, there's a partner in your life and it's constantly, you just need to, you just need to, you just need to.

But really the thing is, I'm desperately seeking this feeling that this is going to be okay, this rooted sense of anchored in. and it's it's a constant content constant the other one is honestly is um are all men scumbags is every man out cheating is every man filling up his life with video games and pornography is every man and it's it's it's harder and harder to defend when you look at the data and but it's it's a it's a it's a it's a recursive problem right i don't feel like i have any worth i don't my home is a failure factory's porn and video games don't really me that's it i'm just gonna yeah then i am going to take the exit ramp where i don't bother anybody and i'll just burn a hole in my head dude that sucks it sucks to here and it must be rough to

the least popular opinion for a guy to give on the internet with the most email audience is it must be tough for a woman to navigate dating at the moment because guys see all of the ways that it's way easier for women than it is for men um but the thing that i would say to guys that this is a huge huge like blue ocean for them for is you have somebody that's been in counseling for like fucking forever and does a call-in show with millions and millions of people that watch it and this is one of the biggest problems look at how low the bar is dude i tell my son that he's 15 i tell them all the time you can you can have it all it it really is not i get it you watch enough content on YouTube and you can think that because you're five, six or because you're not

earning six figures or because you're whatever, hey, that's, those are some real things and there's some challenges out there. But Jesus fuck, like how many women are calling in and saying, you know what the problem is? These guys just don't earn enough. These guys just don't do this, that, and the other. It's like, I don't know if he's going to. I've gotten that question zero times. There's just too many short men out there. I've never got that. To caveat this, how many do you think are calling in and saying this guy doesn't commit or isn't romantic enough or isn't whatever as a way to hide the more base shallow he's not tall enough he doesn't earn enough maybe maybe and i've been called naive before i like to just take people at their

word like if you're calling in and we can get too his not what you're really calling but um yeah I mean, I like to just, maybe, maybe. Yeah, maybe. And I do get, like, hey, my husband's gained 150 pounds or the last few years. But as you dig into that, it's almost always, I'm watching my husband die in front of me, right? And that's usually the question.

Like, how do I keep my, I'm watching him die and I can't be a part of this anymore. And yes, he's not attractive anymore. And yes, he walks around his waddy tides and it's like, it's not a pretty sight. But the deeper question is I'm watching. I'm becoming someone I don't want to be. because that guy at work thinks my jokes are hilarious

and I'm starting to think up jokes all day so that maybe that guy at work. I'm becoming somebody I don't want to be because I'm watching the person I love wither away underneath me and I don't know how to prop them up. Wow. Yeah, the bar is set so fucking low, dude.

It is. But you know what? I think that's an important thing. The dating apps have screwed up everything. Like, no question about all that. It's a train rack. But personally, I've never had somebody call and say there's just too many short.

man out there. I've not had anybody call and say, this person doesn't make this much money. I haven't got that call. And maybe it's, maybe it's veiled and people are being, whatever. But most of the time, it's, I'm with somebody. Why won't they? Can they just stop cheating? Can they just plug back in? How do I let them know that they're worth something? I hear you speak to so many people about when or how they should forgive their partner after an affair. Is that even a question that has an answer? You know, this has come up a ton recently.

Endemic, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love watching your show. But I tell you what, man, the place I always have people start is you've got to forgive yourself. Because almost every time either they'd created a world where they were so blind, sided that there was a part of them way down that knew I don't know everything going on in this house or it's the opposite I didn't listen in my gut and I knew they were spending too much time

with so-and-so I knew they were hiding their phone I knew that these I had a sense that and most people that experience infidelity go through a period of I can't trust myself I can't because I ignored myself or I didn't even see it coming and so before you start trying to offer before you start trying to forgive somebody else you have to forgive yourself that's a huge hurdle to get over it's a massive hurdle because you've got to forgive two people the sidewalk you walk on no longer exist there's only two people in this relationship and you have to forgive both of them yeah and you have to give forgive yourself first you got to start with you first and it's not as though you did anything wrong like that's not what the forgiveness is but forgiveness is about reestablishing trust i got to learn

trust myself again and then i got to ask myself okay what must be true for me to reestablish trust with you and that's a tough thing because then you have to ask what if he or she says now and that's a scary proposition to find yourself but I've also seen people

experience infidelity and go on to have build something amazing and new and it's just are you all willing to put in the word what she thinks the proportion of that I don't know

I honestly don't know because I don't know the it's gosh this is a horrific example that just popped into my mind um i remember when my wife and i when she had her first miscarriage i found myself part of a secret club that i didn't know existed people came out of the woodwork to be like yeah us too us too us too and so infidelity's often worked the same way that i don't know how much of it goes unreported that wouldn't fill out a survey or wouldn't you know what is some of the ways

that you see infidelity showing up that isn't just about sex you've got a broader definition of infidelity than most people i think i do yeah um i i it's a place where you go to hide from the life that you've co-created with somebody so i think you can cheat on somebody with money i think you can cheat on somebody with a golf course i think you can cheat on with somebody with work it'd be who's your mistress all right um where are you putting your passion and your time and your efforts and your energy And if your work is in a means to an end that supports this thing you're co-creating with somebody else, as far as I'm concerned, that's infidelity. If I hide from my family or from my romantic partner on a golf course or on a fishing boat, that's infidelity.

I am taking my vitality and I'm channeling it elsewhere to avoid this. And that's different. Like I like to go to punk rock shows, dude. I like to, like, I don't know. I live over in the comedy club by my house. I have passion about those things. but I'm not hiding from my family. They're hobbies. They enrich me so that. Every year where I work, they throw a big battle of the bands. It's in Nashville. Like everybody goes to Nashville to make it in the music

industry. Then they all have to get real jobs at some point. So every year, they throw a big battle of bands. One year, I had a book coming out. I was on the road. And so I was going to skip it. And my wife said this. She said, I get a better version of you when you're playing music with your friends. And so it's not a matter of hiding, not doing hobbies, not that, but if you're hiding from if you're numbing out with um i think i think infidelity is easily distilled down into intercourse with somebody else and i think that's too narrow of a view it's just it's escape what about financial infidelity yeah that's the way people that's the way people control their their partners in a major way or the way they they hide money um yeah it's devastating

no it's extremely common but it goes back to the thing you asked me at the very beginning like with if i won't share your codes man the other way i get beat up on the internet all the time by the by the internet warriors is saying dude if you're married share a checking account like that just have you seen the difference in divorce rate between couples that do and don't share its savings account it's madness it's i think it's like multiples it's of likelihood difference And there'll be some selection effect there. There will be some selection. Of course, of course.

But seriously, again, going back, if I don't, we will share DNA, but we won't share a bank account or our social media. You make 65 grand and I make 75 grand. We won't share that. And we have to say like, well, no, that's mine. Again, it goes all the way back to trust and safety. And if I feel like I have to say, no, no, no, that's mine. Well, we need to put that on the table and have that comment. conversation.

Tell you one of the patterns that I learned from your show, which I now use in my day-to-day life. Oh, I can't wait to hear this. It is. I saw you do this. I think I saw you do this twice separately. And I was like, that seems like a pattern. I'm just going to start maybe mentioning this if I see this come up. People partway through a relationship where one partner lightly floats the,

suggestion of starting to open things up just a little bit. Open things up with another partner? Yeah. So we're still, you know, like we've been together for however long. And I just think, you know, like wouldn't it be the number of times that that person has already been in an extramarital, extra partner. And they're now trying to retroactively create conditions to make the thing that they did when you hadn't agreed it.

agreeable so that they can continue it in future and I've pattern matched that I'm not kidding I've pattern matched that incorrectly like 100% of the time and it's come back into land someone said oh dude like such and such and such

things happened and you know sort of suggesting this like it's already happening I'm going to tell you yeah I'm going to tell you something that you're really not going to want to hear and I'm probably wrong inside I'm like I'm right

John said I'm right And it's happened a few times now, each time I've been correct. I, can you seek a sense of aliveness with the person you're with? No, we need someone new. And, but again, if I, if I, man, if I need to go sleep with somebody else to save this. it does sound insane I was with someone recently they're a comedian there in Nashville

and said I've accidentally become a Dave Ramsey apologist like all these young comedians now are coming up like how do you do this and he said if you're trying to make art and you owe somebody money you'll never make the art you were meant to make

because you're always going to have to ask yourself will this joke the one that would be the one right over the line what will my boss think or what will like I've got I got a hedge and he asked me like my thoughts on the death stuff and I was like hey if we are arguing on or like spend less than you make we're I'm I'm probably not the guy to argue with you because the math like it's just such a basic if you think sleeping with her will solve your intimate relationship with the like it's just the math doesn't work and I think we have so many intellectuals intellectual gymnastics nowadays that we can we can justify anything but i think going back to simplicity peace all for peace man it's just all for peace and i honestly don't know why we can't do that other than um i mean there's the psychology of uh of conspiracy theories there's the psychology of complexity um i just don't think we have psychology for boredom or lane says

we step over a hundred dollar bills to pick up pennies like man just mostly eat healthy and exercise and then worry about red number 40 and like whatever like do that later you know what I mean it's just it's a strange place we found herself and I think it's a luxury well we spoke about this it's a luxury we spoke about this over dinner last night that there isn't a particularly good matter in the world for re-injecting excitement, and there is one for increasing peace. That you say, we need more commitment, we need more loyalty, we need more downtime, more regulation, you should be, you know, nervous systems should be in a line, all this stuff. But it's much scarier to say, I'm bored in this.

This is too mundane. Because it sounds an awful lot. It's perilously close to I Want More Novelty, which is straying, eyes lingering on somebody else, extramarital stuff. But that's because we've made every, and we may have talked about this the last time, but we've made every sexual encounter of the Super Bowl.

We've made every, everything has to be this eruption. And it's insane, right? Like, you've got to see the, like, in my world, you've got to see the relief when I tell, a parents who have two kids under the age of three, like, hey, you're going to have 13 minutes to get this done. And they'll look at each other and be like, like, nobody talks about survival sex with a young couple.

Survival sex. Dude, we got 13 minutes between that nap and this feeding. Are you in, right? That's in no movie. That's in no TV show. In fact, they'll tell you if that's what it's reduced to, then your marriage is probably run its course. This relationship's probably over.

as opposed to just a practical reality. Yes. Just traffic in reality, man. Traffic at peace. Your air traffic control. And by the way, you can create novelty in this funny little moment. We can create play and laughter and silliness. And you want to give this a shot?

All right, we got six minutes left. Are you in? Like, you can while you're on vacation with your family at a cheap hotel while they're asleep. Y'all can try to figure it out in the hotel bathroom that you can barely turn around it. Like, that is tiny ways that you can inject novelty and fun and play. And that next morning when your kid's like, I want pancakes and you just cut eyes across the hotel room at your spouse and you're like, that becomes good, man. It's that's the good stuff. And if you try to make the fireworks show bigger every time, I just think that's a, that's how you end up overdosing, man.

We'll get back to talking in just a minute, but first, some things are built for summer. sunburns, hot girl walks, your ex posting their Euro road trip, and now, Lemonade and Salt. Ah? Element just dropped their brand new lemonade salt flavor, and it's everything that you want on a hot day. Tart, salty, and stupidly refreshing. It's like a grown-up lemonade stand in a stick with actual function behind the flavor. Because, let's be real, if you're sweating through workout, sauna sessions, or just walking to your car in July, then you are losing more than just water. Element replaces the electrolytes that your body actually need. Sodium, potassium, and magnesium with no sugar, no junk and no nonsense. I've been drinking it every single day for years, and in the Texas seat, this lemonade

flavor in a cold glass of water is unbelievably good. Best of all, they've got a no-questions-asked refund policy with an unlimited duration, so you can buy it and try it for as long as you want, and if you don't like it for any reason, they'll give you your money back, and you don't even need to return the box. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of elements most possible. popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below

or heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. I got a bunch of guy friends that are first time dads. One's kid is two months old. No, less. Less six weeks. Another is six months old. Another is one year old. What is your survival kit? of the most important strategies or realizations for new adults. I may have told you this. The greatest parenting advice I ever heard in my life was from Jack Black, which is No, you haven't told me.

When he said this, I was like, that's, that's it. That's all of my graduate school distilled into one sentence. Don't try to make a happy, get happier. Like, and the story he went on to tell was, and again, I'm going to bastardize it, but his son was playing in the mud with a stick or something, and he was like, I'm just, not my kid like and in you end up six six hours later sugared up exhausted fried you spent three hundred dollars on a thing and then you went to this it's like man i should have just gotten a hose out and sat in the mud and got another stick and that's stuff he's going to tell

his funeral remember that time dad you rolled me around in the mud versus yet another so man if your kids are happy get on the floor and have fun and then the other thing is you have to be intentional about your relationship and it just shifts man and that's okay it's a season it's winter man it's cold put on coat like we don't stand out in the out in the street here in December and just what's the shift curse the sky you got any responsibilities I heard I had a grad school colleague once that he had four kids and I was in man that was maybe two or three years into marriage it was rocky it was tough and I was like I don't know how you do this and he said this it's just a different kind of awesome and he goes you know when you first meet somebody and you're

like cannot sleep and it's amazing that's awesome and then you kind of get real serious together and you'll start getting like, that's awesome. Because you get kids four, it's just a different kind of awesome. He's like, you can't just, you know, swipe off the kitchen table and just get after it like at four in the afternoon like you used to be able to because you got kids running around. It's a different kind of awesome. And also, you don't know what's like to see your middle school kid run across the finish line

and just feel kind of big, right? Or I watched my daughter. She's nine out at a lemonade stand on a Saturday. But dude, it was hot. And I was like, man, drive by and buy some, you know what I mean? like rooting for her from the you know what I mean my neighbor texted I'm like dude go like I'll reimburse you brother and he's like no we got this but it's like I want her to succeed it's like it's a different kind of awesome but it's trying to drag that old relationship that old freedom the old excitement

into this present thing that's what kills folks man so that when you have baby one that marriage is over it's over awesome build a new one when my wife got pregnant I was like okay I got nine months till i get my wife back and then when hank was born i was like all right so maybe it's gonna be nine more after this like in a year then solely it took me for it took me 15 years to realize that marriage was over and it was awesome and now we get to build a new one with a kid involved does that suggest that people who are together and intending on becoming parents and aren't yet at the point whether they're about to should lean in and make the most of that time because you're not it's that kind of awesome it's finite yeah and if you are constantly

comparing it to this and this it's it's like um like if i have a i'm not going to measure from here to the end of that wall in gallons those are both valid measurements just the wrong measure and so that time we were together before we had kids and before they took all our money and our time and our time and our exhaustion it was amazing and now we're going to measure this new time in our life in gallons and we're going to measure this one in meters we're going to measure this time in our life in in hours right those are all good measurements you just got to use the right measurement for the season you mentioned before about um instinct versus rationality gut or head or heart how do you come to think about making decisions in a relationship when it comes to gut versus head how do you

sort of stress test each of these i've just come to learn with this is n equals one here i i get over emotional about things and i make very emotional decisions and so i've got a few people in my life, both professionally and long-term buddies, long-term men in my life that I will sit down with and say, here's what I'm experiencing, and here's what I'm seeing, here's I'm about to do. And I mean, I wish I had a better way, better answer for you, but I outsource that because I'm not a reliable, I'm not a reliable person in the thick of it. And I just learned that about myself. I make up really remarkable stories about why somebody else is, my fundamental attributionary is, It's brutal, dude.

The stories I make up are extraordinary. About the dude in the square of Kia that, like, cut me off. The story I make up about that guy, dude, it's an abomination. So I outsource it because I'm not a good judge of it. And I think anyone who says, go with all your feelings or go with all fact, both of them are those are pathologies on either side of the bell curve. How do you handle it? I tend to be too head dominant.

Okay. Yeah. So I need to actually listen to my gut much more. Is that a learned response? Has your gut led you astray? Or was listening to how you feel about stuff not attended to? Certainly not encouraged. Okay.

So everything would be sort of controlled, very important to have a measured response, hypervigilance, that kind of thing. So, yeah, learning to actually trust. instincts and to know how what's an appropriate threshold for something that isn't your rational brain to be screaming to go do this thing or to not do this thing. You know, that's pretty loud. Is it loud enough? And that's where it comes back to the trust thing, like self-trust. It's a very interesting situation to get into. I wonder how much of that, you know, is born out. I think a lot of my friends have this too, that we're all trying to now listen to the fleeting thoughts that are coming up from our gut as opposed to the really loud, sophisticated ones that are coming down from our head

because my adult awakening was built around Farnham Street blog and mental models and Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger and Taleb and Robert Green and so much, and Peterson and so much of this is dictating top-down, like wrote learning the ways to operate that are trying to compensate for the fact that you never actually allowed that to emerge in the first place

but that's just more top down right right right right now in the right direction hopefully it's one that's a little bit more aligned but it's still not just allowing yourself to sit with

I don't think this is working or I think that that's a really fucking good idea okay so let me try out a hypothesis I think we do not have a cultural psychology we don't have a roadmap for grief and grief is a communal experience

and we've extracted all of that the great David Kessler I think he's just the grief guru but says that grief demands a witness and I don't think we have a witness anymore and so we we distill grief into sad and then we go on and try to solve sad

and we pathologize sad but I don't think we have a cultural I struggle with just like I went all in on this thing and didn't work. And I'm supposed to want to stand under my covers for a few days and not crush and grind it. And I'm supposed to just want to mainline whatever fat or sugary or salty substances. There's some basic biological mechanisms for dealing with grief. We used to have a parlor in our house. And we changed it to the living room. But they had a parlor where they held bodies

until we outsourced that to funeral professionals, right? Like we have no ability to to sit with this ended and I think that's that's unhealthy what do people want to hear the situation like that there's been a loss nothing large or small presence that's my lived experience sitting with people who have lost children which I can't think of a worse a worse loss um makes me wonder how like how AI is can take over everything there's a biology to presence And it is not found in an answer. It is found in a guy coming and sitting by you. And bring in half a casserole or a bag of Taco Bell and a couple of drinks, like, I'll be here.

And anybody who tries to come up with a bunch, there's, in the grief world, there's a whole bunch of things to not say. What are the things to not say? God needed another angel. Everything happens for a reason. Like nonsense like that. It's just like a knife in your soul, right? but just I'm coming over or the worst text

let me know if you need anything well my kid died I need a whole lot right which I'm going to put the burden on you to let me know how I can take care of you right it's not I'm just coming up I'm coming over with some shit taco I'm coming over and I'll sit here we may throw all those tacos away I'll be right here

and there's something it's biology it's presence yeah which is like hey me and my wife are going through a rough time coming over dude i don't have any answers for you i'll listen to you right and that's being comfortable enough i in this new job i've just decided i'm to stop trying to answer questions i'm not asked i'll just i'll just be here you know what i mean which i've had to wrestle with because my purpose was always a given an answer um nah now my purpose

is i'll show up i'll come there's a kind of a bit of a narcissism in that too i'm aware that that it's a lovely thing to do. You're there for your friend. But there is a little bit of an ostracism because it centralizes you as the helper in the person's situation. As a presence or as with words? When you're coming up with a solution.

I know that this is your problem, but allow me, I will step down from the eye and allow me to bestow on you. It uses a hurting person. They become a Xanax for you. I'm uncomfortable with your loss. Ask anybody who's been diagnosed with cancer. they spend most of their energy

making sure the people around them are okay. And that's madness, right? Because now I'm uncomfortable because I'm staring at... My discomfort is making you uncomfortable. I'm sorry, I'll fix it. That's right. Yeah.

Like, hey, I just got diagnosed with cancer. I'll be right over. It's going to sit here. I just got diagnosed with cancer. Sorry. Yeah. Let me know if I can do anything. So cool.

I just gave you a chore. Now that you got this terrible diagnosis, I'll give you a chore to make me feel better. Yeah. Yeah. So, man, if I can tell anybody, if somebody's hurting, just show up. Or if somebody says, hey, I need to go grab somebody to eat, I'll be there. Right.

And I just learned that from a group of West Texas, like, no therapist, man. It was just West Texas guys that I saw almost come to blows over who's going to pick up a check. And it's like, oh, that's what friendship looks like. Like, not like, bro, you Venmo me 425 for that. No, dude, I got it. I got it. We'll figure it out later. There's just something about that, man.

And I think even, you know, talk about Isaac Perkins has written, but like, but again, all that's all for peace, man. It's all for peace. A big difference between an abundance mindset and the scarcity mindset. I don't think you need to get into Ronda Byrne, the secret woo energy attraction territory to just kind of understand that going through life, assuming that things will go okay is just a better way to exist. Bill Burr's got this wonderful bit where he says, things are going to be fine. And even if things aren't going to be fine, is it not better to assume that things are going to be fine? And if they're not, you'll deal with it when the time comes. Yeah.

That's Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman's research partner, had that great line. Like, being pessimistic is stupid, because if it comes true, you experience it twice. I love that. Yeah, man. Let's just assume it's going to work out. I'm going to do the best I possibly can.

And if it doesn't, if, like, we, If we get hit by a meteorite, we'll deal with that then. Yeah. But I'm going to, we're going to plow ahead as though. But I think we're trying to hedge grief because we don't know what to do if it actually comes true. Because it's such an overwhelming emotion. And we have no, we're not designed to handle grief alone, and we don't have anybody else to call. And the people that we do call, we feel like we need to manage there.

We end up having to take care of them. Sorry that I'm a burden. Right. Yeah. There's a great piece in the Kardashians that Charlie Hooper broke down, which was one of the girls has gone through a break up and the mum is there and they're talking and the mum says the line, I really need you to get over this. And it's, Charlie explains it perfectly and it's like that literally says your discomfort is making me uncomfortable. I need you to sort yourself so that I can be okay. I don't have time for

your discomfort. Yeah. Oh, that's tough as a kid to feel. That is fucking rough. Yeah. But I think parents like sometimes going back to what you said about your buddies having young kids never lie to your kids a buddy of mine uh and here's what i mean by that not just on big stuff a buddy of mine um he had a neighbor whose boat fell off the trailer and so he called all these neighborhood guys to come over and help with the boat back on the trailer and he's had a young son maybe seven or eight and he's like come on over we're going to go do something all these guys help three two and they got the boat back on the trailer and they did all stuff on the way home he said man we helped that guy out and he said daddy i didn't do anything and already he knew like i just lied to my kid like i was using the proverbial we and i kept

moving him out of the way hold on back up back up we're going to pick this thing up and so don't lie to your kids man if they come in seventh place don't say great job or don't say man you did so good you got seventh place your kid knows your line say man that really stinks you gave it your all and you got seventh place or if they didn't give it you're all and you got seventh place or if they didn't give that you're all. You can ask them. Like, do you feel good about your performance on them? Um, but it's telling your kids the truth, but it's, man, yeah. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Momentus. If your sleep's not dialed, taking ages to not off, you're waking up at random times and feeling groggy in the morning.

Momentus's sleep packs, how did I miss both of those? I hear to help. They're not your typical knock you out supplement overloaded with melatonin, just the most evidence-based ingredients at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night and wake up, feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning, which is why I take these things every single night and why I trust momentous with my life, or at least with my sleep, because they make the highest quality supplements on the planet, what you read on the label, so what's in the product and absolutely nothing else. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 30-day money back guarantee, so you can buy it completely risk-free, use it, and if you do not like it for

any reason, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get 35% of your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to live momentous.com slash modern wisdom using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom, a checkout. How often do you see relationships where there hasn't been that sort of honest, open, the transparency between the partners be fixed or made worse

by the presence of kids because I imagine that there must be some couples that have a child and it just galvanizes in them this oh we have a project like we need to get really really serious now but the question of do you think you had kids and started being truthful

or you started being truthful and then had kids to me it seems more likely that the increased difficulty of having kids around is just going to make that problem. No, I mean, I think there's always a temptation to make the person in front of you feel good. And yeah, I don't know. That's a great question. I don't know. But I know that every stage along the way, at least I might have a 15-year-old who's a sophomore in high school and I have a, my daughter's nine, she's in fourth grade. every stage has been a there's been some sort of GPS pin in my wife that's gone off that's all the way back high school was not a great time for my wife I peaked at 18 it's been downhill ever since man high school is the greatest time of my life

I was a Texas high school football player like it was it was I loved all of high school and so as my son was heading into his freshman year everything about me was like this is it man and championship this is good yeah i was going to live vicariously like dude if you just i was uncle rick man it's like if you just work even harder and for her it was just get small get small get small and so i think that happens at every stage along the way um i didn't know what i didn't know what i didn't know when i had me feel super inept and i have i have a script for when i feel inept which is put your head down and go work more which then took me away from my house more which made me harder to be

around because i knew my house was every time i showed up i didn't do the diaper ride i didn't do the time right so it just started this thing so it's just now we know enough to know it hey we're getting ready for college and the the starting to already the schools are already circling all right the sharks are circling what college are going to go to if you don't know your major you're going to be a failure all that that wasn't a good time for me how's a great time for her right and so we i now know that so now we can sit down and have that conversation like man this makes me out comfortable i can't wait for this which makes us back to the table but that's a great question i don't know How much healing gets done through raising kids, like revisiting, reparenting yourself, seeing the patterns that you, imagining what you were like at that age.

Because not that many people have gone and done their inner child work or their narrative therapy or their internal family systems or whatever and have pieced together the arc of, wow, that's what it was like to be seven and me. Yeah. And shit, I wonder how many. It's made me way more compassionate for my parents and at the same time way, I was just with my sister this morning. I've got an anger, too, that I didn't know was there. And so, yeah, I don't know. It made you more compassionate for yourself? Yeah, yeah.

For the younger version of you that did the whatever. Like, oh, dad was going through stuff. That wasn't me. I was nine. Yeah, it's made me a lot more compassionate with myself. I was 16, man. I didn't know. You know what I mean?

Like, I was being a 16-year-old. And I got a lot of compassion for that kid. yeah a lot more compassion um and then i think the challenge for me is how do i extend that compassion yet also know that my son lives in a world now that the world that doesn't have any compassion for that he can he could text something that makes him unemployable forever now right i had the privilege of being a 16 year old and he doesn't have that and so there's a different level of oversight that makes me more nervous but i'm confident that every generation of parent has some sort of It wasn't when I was. It wasn't when I was. I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. This infinite regress of it wasn't like that in my day. Right, right, right. Which is, I mean, at some point I sat down with him the other day and I was like, hey, there's, we're at a stage now where there's certain things you can get into that I can't stop. I can't. I mean, I literally can't. And you're going to have to make some decisions at 16 that I didn't have to make until I was older about what I want in my head, what I want to experience, what I want to see. he's in a world where the wrong Adderall at the wrong party he'll kill him

there's a billboard near the gym that I go to I saw that the other day I saw that the other day fentanyl thing with a young boy on that well this was this is a kind of like a a lineup I guess of there must be 30 people 40 people young old men women and

fentanyl kills on that presumably some of them will have been you know maybe treading the line a little bit more closely than others, but definitely in that lineup, there'll have been someone that just, oh, I'll just take a little sniff of this or whatever. That's it, right?

Or it was a, it was a, like, it was a Navy SEAL-esque adventure to find a Playboy when I was a kid. And he's got, and he's on, and even, we're pretty, I'm pretty much a Luddite. I was born in the wrong century, my wife says, but every human he interacts with, has a phone, right, with. you went phone free with your kid right we're not phone free but i'm i'm i'm pretty pretty dark ages yeah we've taken everything off of it it took a while to get even dumb phone oh yeah yeah yeah yeah his parents are nerd so my son had to give us a i'll tell you all this he had he had when he was when he was 14 over christmas break in eighth grade he actually

he had a great point that paused me he said at least when you were a kid because we're no no cell phones at all. And we lived down in the country and he said, at least when you were a kid, there was a phone on the wall with one of those little squiggly cords and you got to call your friends. And he said, I'm getting left out of everything. No birthday is doing nothing. And I said, that's, you're actually right. And so, um, he had to draft the first round of the contract. And then me and my wife, it was basically like Shar-Tank with me and my wife. It was so. So fucking Dave Ramsey coded. It was fun. It is unbelievable how Dave Ramsey coded you are. How so? You've drawn it. You had to draw up this. Did he have to do a process?

do you do a oh he absolutely did but that's because we're academics that's where we got it from like you have to uh oh both of his parents are nerds but like I want to talk through now

what happens when this if this thing goes sideways but it was good like and um yeah we've slowly I mean he's about to be 16 he's about to be driving down the highway in Nashville so

driving but still not texting I mean you can text now yeah he can't but it's that like hey the the wrong text thread and it's over man it's over and so and i know that because dude i spent 20 years with screenshot text messages and snapchats and whatsaps getting during sexual assault investigations and during this and all of a sudden man like dude i just i've just experienced it on the other side of that thing man it scares me for him but i have to sit down a 16 year old and say man

at some point you have to make some choices and i'll do the best i can but um to love you through it and I'll always sit here with you. There isn't really a good archetype for the danger of a young person making a digital error. There's not. You know, because full protectionism isn't helpful because they're going to walk out and just get, it's like showing up to, like, Town Square your first time, like at midnight. It's just so much, right? That will be the day he walks out of the house.

So you can't do that to your kid. But also, man, that Sean Ryan says that great quote about you're not giving your kid access to the world. You're giving the world access to your kid. And I think that's, there's some truth to that. When you hand your kid a smartphone, tell them walk out the door. Best luck to you. You make good choices. You just gave the world access to your child.

And they're better than all of us. There's too much money and experts. And now it's not even real people, man. It's an unfair fight. It's a way unfair fight. And if you're an adult, fine. Take on an unfair fight if you want to. If you're at the bar and you want to fight all four of those dudes, I mean, you get to live with the consequences.

I can't, you can't put a child in that. It's just not fair. It's not fair. What do you, as you've got to the stage now, Sunday's 16, soon will be 18. Some sort of college thing. How does that make you reflect on the upbringing of a kid and kind of the arc of being a parent, I suppose? I remember when I moved out, I was 18, and I went to university, and I didn't realize that, you know, the most amount of time I was probably going to spend back in that house in any one go was five days over Christmas for the rest of my life. Yeah. And you just, you're just fired up. I just wanted to go. I couldn't be bothered the fact that I didn't have a clothes hole so that there wasn't a fucking iron, like, ready. I was like, I don't care. I don't know. Fuck, I'm not going to iron my clothes in any case. You know, it doesn't matter. I just want to go, go, go, go. It's just so exciting.

I'm going to move to a big city. I'm going to go to university. I'm going to make new friends. I'm going to be living on my own. It's going to be so. And that's, yeah, you're not there to regulate your parents feeling like this huge deceleration is about to happen in their life. I'm having to work really hard not to pre-mourn him being gone.

My wife had a great-rooting the remaining time that you do have with him thinking about this time. This is the last one. Yeah, man, just got to be with it. And I've got to be ready to grieve on the other end of it. um there's a there's a shift that happens when the kid's 24 25 and when you it's actually much earlier than that but when the kid leaves your payroll you can't tell them what to do anymore your parent shifts to an encourager right or uh you know and so what i want to do now is to model

a you need to know this not intellectually but you know this in your chest you can always come back home. And if you find yourself over your head, you can always come back home. And the fun for me and my wife is, let's make this a place they want to come home. And that when they're thinking, man, let's go to, let's go see mom and dad. And that's, I don't know if that's even possible, but that's a fun thing to try to put out into the universe. And also, man, you've got to go have adventures. And I'll say this. I don't know many kids. In fact, I know very few, if any, that are foaming at the mouth. to get their license like my son is that's a thing that's gone away like when when i was a kid turning 16 was like give me my car key so i can get out of here um but i have to believe that constricting so much

time on social media or video games or just creating a digital bubble in our home um and he can't wait to get out which means he can't wait to go to college and he's already done the math he's like man i need to be at least this far from you at university because it'll be too easy to come home and i need to go and learn and I hate that but I love it right I don't I don't I want him to come home every weekend but I don't I want him to go out and have adventures because that's how you learn man that's how you end up in a whole other continent with a whole with a job didn't exist when you were at university right right that's how that's how that happens yeah dude when I did a did two business degrees and neither of them had social media and no one talked about nothing the year that I went

to university 2006 was the year that Facebook uh became available in the UK if you had a university email address. Yeah, you had to have a university email address. And I remember when my grandpa friend requested me, it was like, bloop, and we're out. Like, I'm off this thing. Yeah, I'm out, I'm out, I'm out. Yeah.

Get me back in my. But remember, you had to have an edu. That edu address. AC.uk, for the UK. And, yeah, five years at university and nothing about social media. So, yeah, we still don't have a good way of communicating that to people that are way younger.

I mean, you don't know how to use social media. We don't know how to mediate our own use. I use my phone too much, so do you. Yeah. I have it on a separate phone. Yeah. That's all I can do it. Cocaine phone and an ale phone.

That's right. George Max solution. I've never heard of that. Yeah. Just going back to something that I think is really important that if business is your drug, rest will feel like stress. For the people who are like hard charging type A, insecurity. your overachievers, what is your advice for someone learning to sort of let go of that chaos a little bit and deriving a better sense of well-being from somewhere outside of that?

How have you done it yourself? Because you're someone that kind of lives for the chaos and when faced with a problem defaults to the same thing I do, which I'll just grip the bar harder. I'll just rip the sucker off. Yeah, I'll hit that, dude. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all solvent. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's wired in there. Um, an important exercise for me was writing a letter to myself 10 years from now. And it was that for what? So you're here and you got this thing. And that was an important exhale. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, I had given myself a number that I had to be making in a salary by the age of, I think was 35, was my big one. And when I blew through that, and I felt more insecure than ever and more exposed, it was sitting down and having an honest

conversation with my 45 year old self like and it goes back to for what like what is this going to have for us right and so i think when you start decoupling yourself from how busy you are as a as a an identity you just have to know it's going to be painful being bored is going to feel like feel painful and that's okay and not being productive in every moment it's going to feel like you're losing something resting is going to feel silly um calling a friend just to see what's up is going to feel awkward and it's letting yourself know those things are okay.

But is that worthwhile pursuit? Why not just keep crushing it? You can, but for what? I mean, for what? I mean, how much higher in the hills do you need to move, man?

That goes back to Solve him for peace. If you want to solve for Hawaii, you can do that. And my problem is I like working. It's a fun thing for me. And so even the busyness is, I enjoy it. I enjoy finding the next project and always text.

I was texting my manager earlier like, hey, what about this and this? And he's like, okay, man. Like, it's always like, what's the next thing? I like that. I don't think it comes from a pathological place or an insecurity. I just like it. But it's just known if you're redlining and a red line and a red line, it's like, man,

we talked last night. You're like, hey, how's your sleep? And it's like, oh, geez, man. I don't want to fix it. Don't bring up the assort. I don't want to fix testosterone with sleep, man. I want it to like be a supplement. It's like, do you sleep?

and so you can or let me ask you like write your letter to your 45 year old self what would you tell them I don't understand so with that I don't understand

how that exercise works you're I'm now 37 writing it to my 47 I'm doing these things now for the life you're going to have at 45 at 47 that's interesting

um I'd say I'm working really hard at letting go of the coping mechanisms that I used to hide a lot of the senses of insufficiency that I had for a very long time. Yeah. That if I can make myself sufficiently impressive or statusful or charming or enigmatic or aloof, right, in distance, in absence.

That's a good one. That's one of my favorites. Oh, yeah. I'm working really, really hard to not appear like I'm working. I'm working really, really hard to not be present. Yeah, it's the bad hair day punks that work six hours on their hair to make it look like they didn't work on their hair. The red sneaker effect.

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of it's that. I really hope that I look back in 10 years time and go, fuck, like, I'm so glad of the work that that guy put in. Yeah. And this is, you know, I'm chirping on this a lot at the moment. This entire podcast is a thinly veiled autobiography, do you? Like the whole thing is the whole body of work is just, what am I thinking about at the moment,

what do I care about, what's important to me? and I'm fortunate that even though I'm a pretty weird guy but I face questions that a significant cohort of people do as well and what that means is that if there's something that I'm thinking about or struggling with a non-insignificant number of other people are also thinking about it or struggling with it too and it means that if I just pursue my own instincts and follow sort of what to me feels like a challenge

or something that I'm interested in in the tailwind behind me are all of these other people that are also like, oh my God, never really, no one's ever asked that thing before. Mel Robbins, a good example. Some of my favorite conversations that people have is when another person reveals something in them that you thought was a unique curse that only you have. And it's happened hundreds of times,

slightly less so recently, maybe just because I've listened to a lot of other people talking, so I've picked up a lot of the low-hanging fruit. But one of them was Mel Robbins, and I can't remember who she was speaking to. A couple of years ago, I was researching for a guest. Mel's talking, she says, throughout my entire life,

I always had this sense that someone was mad at me. Somebody was, I'd done something wrong, and someone was mad. I always just felt like I had to sort of be on tenterhooks a little bit, and someone was going to find out whatever it was that I'd done that was wrong. I was in the wrong. That was like a bad girl. And I paused it and put it down. It's like, holy fuck.

Let's just put a word to a thing that I'd never named, identified, even knew existed. Didn't know that any, even if I'd known those things, didn't know that it wasn't just some weird, you know, random pathology that only my unique constitution. has managed to create, oh, this is some idiosyncrasy of just me and to hear, oh, fuck, somebody else is like that. Yeah. That's, it's the most, it's the reason that I'm continuing to try and lean into

talking about relating, talking about emotions, talking about how people feel when, when stuff comes up. Because so much of what we're doing is just trying to manage our emotional state. And one of the most reassuring things I think that you can hear as a human is, yeah, man. Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah.

Me too. Okay, so think about 10 years from now to a 47-year-old Chris. So 10 years ago, you were a contestant on a game show. Dating show. Dating show, yeah. I guess it wasn't the prices right, huh? So let's assume podcasting doesn't exist. My wife found letters from her grandfather.

Well, he was off fighting Nazis to her grandmother who kept the dairy farm in Eastern New Mexico going while he was gone. It's a treasure trove of letters. Romantic letters. Here's what's going on letters. The whole thing. And she's taken to making sure, I remember her saying, like, I got to make sure our kids know these letters, like, know that.

And so no matter what technology exists 10 years from now, what a great, like, amazing gift you'll be able to give to your kids as a library of. This is where I was at then. This is the arc of your dad, going from this guy to this guy. This is our human experience. I can think of no greater gift. That is cool. Yeah.

I would like to think that at least this podcast will become part of that. It's done in the third person a lot of the time. But so many of the things that I'm talking about is, oh, fuck, that was a question that dad, a granddad was asking it that point. Yeah. How cool is that? Yeah, it is. It's fun.

We always get toward the end of one of these episodes, and then you fucking turn it around. Come on. What else is there? I'm sure that you've got other stuff. No, I was fascinating. But it goes like, if 47-year-old Chris could put his head on the pillow. That to me. Like, how fast can I go to sleep?

That's my metric for. It's all for peace. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't know why that's such a, you have a better grasp of psychology theories than I do. I don't know why that's so hard these days. I don't know why that's such a foreign concept. That's a good question.

I wonder as well how many people, for how many people that's a priority. I get the sense for someone like you and certainly for somebody like me. I know that that is something that I need. I know it's something, it's when I feel my happiest is when things are, yeah, peace, but that can be peace in the midst of chaos. Of course, it can't be peace in the midst of war.

Right? The difference between lots of things are happening and it's all high pressure. And I have uncertainty and unpredictability and ambivalence and ambiguity. And I really do not know who's got my back and who does it. That's not good. But I have lots of fights on lots of fronts and I'm prepared to go for all of them and

this is exciting and enthusing. Safety and autonomy, man. Yeah. Yeah. If I'm anchored in, I can repel off the side and just go be crazy, man. And I get to repel. War feels like I'm getting shoved into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's out with your control. Yeah, yeah. But I think enoughness is a big part of that. You know, this, like you said before, this sense that you're enough as you are. You don't necessarily need to perform. You don't need to show up in any other way.

You can be as whatever you are to me, and I'll just be here, and I'll just sit, and I'll just listen. And the hard part of that algorithm is when you establish that, it allows you to go further and more powerfully than you could have ever imagined. And I think that's, that's the hard part of trying to, is we've been sold that if you hack around that, then you can get that thing that you want. And it's like, no, man.

man, if you can establish, I'm worth the work that I'm about to put in on this thing, then you can go forever. If you're chasing worth, you can't. Your body eventually says, I quit. I'm out. Interesting to think people that you see that are very successful and in committed long-term relationships, how much of, in a different universe, if somebody had chose a partner that was worse for them or better than, better for them than this one, how divergent,

what those two worlds have been. You know, how much is the person that you are directly due to the fact that you chose a woman? 1,000%. Yeah. You know, if you'd chosen somebody who was, let's say that you chose 100 and you could have chosen 50, a 0 or a minus 50 minus 100, what did those different worlds look like? You know, how resilient are you to this and how much of this is totally contingent on the fact

that you had somebody that was a rocket ship that you were able to. to be refueled off. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's the wisest, like, Mary will and tell the truth and be curious. Like, if you can establish those, and then just go do the next right thing, man. I had this thought, I'm going to bring it up with Scott Galloway the next time I sit down with him. He keeps having, he's got super famous for this same, the most important decision that you

make in your life, it's not going to be where you work, it's not going to be where you live, it's going to be the person that you marry. Charlie Munger's got the same thing, the most important. important decision that you make in your life is your spouse, et cetera. And I understand why that's a talking point that people are pushing because people fall backward into relationships. They're not intentional about this stuff. They don't try and cultivate a practice of honesty. They don't deal with that unspoken expectations. They don't, all of these things. I do wonder, though, whether it is putting even more undue pressure. It is. On people. And this is the problem of

a one-size-fits-all piece of advice for a very broad audience that some people, it's the same thing with some of the sort of post-me-to messaging around how guys should behave with women. Some of the messaging, lots of the messaging says basically don't be pushy.

The problem is, the men who really need to be told, don't be pushy, won't take that to heart. They're just going to plow through it. And the guys who really need to be told, be encouraged are going to really, really embody it. Right.

You know? And the other side of it, the number of Texas women who are like, I just want a guy who, right? So it's, I get the one size fits all. I think the challenge to that, to the statement is we take that the most important person is the person you marry, right? Which I believe that. But I think we dump it on a person, not on the thing, not on the marriage.

And so I need, I force this other person to carry it all. instead of saying, hey, can you and I carry this thing? And I think that's a different, totally different prospectus. You get what I'm saying? Otherwise, you're going to give somebody a burden no human can carry. Like, you know, Brad's stuff that says, like, Wilcox says, like, a good or great marriage, everything in your life ROI is this way. And a not great or bad marriage, everything like un-R-O-Y is the other way, right?

It's like a D-R-I. But if I put that on a human being, man, nobody can carry that. But if I say, hey, you and me, can we pull this thing together? Man, those two horses can pull more together than they can individually. I like that. But it does put a lot of pressure on it. Okay, so if somebody who's 37 and not married, it's easy for me to run my mouth about this. I got married when I was 24, right?

I was a child. And so tell me about the nature of that pressure. Yeah, it's certainly palpable, especially if you take it to heart. And if you want, if you think, well, what's the sort of relationship? What's the sort of future that I want to have? what's a sort of marriage and family that I want to have and I have a bunch of guys there is no good archetype for this

but I have a bunch of guy friends who are unbelievably eligible like some of the most eligible men maybe maybe at least one of the most eligible men in America is he over six foot though that's where yeah I'm a boy kid

yeah true and earns many many many figures Anna he just wants a family like you just can't wait to be a dad but the fact that he has waited a little while is making the pressure mount and you see this in women that have built up a career there's a good example with a lamp that Louise Perry taught me about it if you're moving into a new house and you need to buy a lamp it's a piece of

piss you've got nothing else in the house there's a lamp that'll work and you build the house around the lamp if you've done the opposite you've built this very elaborate internal decor, you need to find the perfect lamp, right, that comes in at this time. And it's one of the unseen costs that people who wait longer pay, both guys and girls. You know, if you wait until you're in your 30s or your late 30s or your 40s or your 50s before you finally decide to settle down, your life, you have more preferences. You have greater complexity. You have this sense that you know what you like and what you want and what you deserve and how this should and it's more hard it's more difficult to find but it's so that's a can i pull that thread for a second

that essentially turns another person into the remaining puzzle piece for your puzzle instead of being i had fewer things to dump out my puzzle was jaggedy and small and trashy so when we were like hey we have to build a new puzzle together that was easy i didn't own anything i was right it just means there's more at stake for you to swipe the table off. It feels like there's more at stake because you've spent all of this time building it up. You spent all of this time creating this life that is yours. But it goes back to for why. Correct.

Ultimately, if all of this was basically you in a holding pattern, waiting, and this is, what are you doing? Are you trying to create a life and a partnership and a family that is the thing? or is it just a side dish to your career? And there is a big cohort of people for whom they, you know, the family thing is just the thing that they do. Like, it's what people do, right? It's not their alchemy.

It's not their zenith of their contribution to this world, right? And again, the problem occurs when somebody from group one gets into a relationship with somebody from group two. that I want this thing to be everything and we can build our lives around this but yeah if you'd spent a long time constructing a very elaborate cathedral this wonderful orchestral life

that's got these moving parts and it's all perfectly put together and it feels like you're giving away more even if the end goal that you need to get to is the thing that you wanted all along even if all you did was be in a holding pattern waiting for this thing to start you feel the deceleration you feel

feel the the um imagine this somebody's got a really big bank account and they need to give away 50% of their net worth in order to be able to do a thing if your bank account's got 10 million and it's way easy than if it's got 10 dollars of course right like if you've got 10 dollars sorry it's way harder than if you've got 10 dollars if you've got 10 dollars and you just give away five bucks like well fucking like it's five bucks what does that matter even if it's 50% of my well but if you've got this huge bank account you feel the amount that you've got to withdraw more it's a bigger overall number so what would feeling that feeling and then going doing the next right thing look like in real life commitment I think a reprioritization

of this is that period of my life's over right as you said it's a different kind of awesome it's a different kind of awesome yeah I had an awesome where I lived for me but eventually you just kind of get bored of yourself and it's a choice between a familiar kind of awesome and an unfamiliar kind of awesome and some people are not prepared to trade the former for the latter because they just don't know they don't know what it is people that we're not good with uncertainty good with unpredictability it's fascinating that the things that we evolved to do to prove worthiness to a mate are the things that end up trapping the getting in the way of doing the thing yeah the the thing that you want the peacock feathers are

now like in front of our face and we can't even see the mate yeah yeah the thing that you want is being sacrificed for the thing which is supposed to get the thing that you want yeah yeah I was supposed to be successful so that I could find a mate so that I could start a family and the reason that I can't start a family is because I'm so busy working so successful yeah exactly to try and find out. Yeah. Yeah, dude, the barstools, I mean, that when you see, don't sacrifice the thing you want for the thing that's supposed to get it. It is, it is a universal rule. Don't sacrifice happiness in order to achieve success so that when you're finally sufficiently successful, you can allow yourself to be happy. Like so many people do that. People sacrifice freedom in order

to be wealthy, right? They think, well, if I turn to a life of crime, I can be wealthy. And it's like, why do you want to be wealthy? Well, so I can be free. You go, if you get caught, you're in jail. yeah you're sacrificing the thing you want for the thing that's supposed to get the thing that you want and it just appears everywhere and it's a

it's a misunderstanding of means and ends and you've got them the wrong way around you keep confusing the continual just I'll just keep saving I'll just keep saving

I'll just keep working I'll just keep building and you go for what that's it but how much of that is a fear of man this is such an abused word how much of that is a fear of being vulnerable

because I can control all of these other things but when it comes to building a life with somebody else I can only control me in that boat 100%. So much of it is about control like the reason that people commit to careers over relationships is that a career can't leave them. Ah. And another person can.

I think that's why you're 90, 25% in on the relationship. But you can't see my text. Yeah. And I'm not prepared to let go of that bit of the career. Uh-huh. Because if I do that and you leave, I have no hedge. I have nowhere to hide.

I haven't got anything that's just for me. That's just for me. It's my little secret. It's my little thing. It's not for you. It's the side account that you don't know about. And I guess the hard part is you can't know how extraordinary the other side of that is. Without.

When you're all in. on an hour that you can't know until you risk at all. Or you risk getting hurt really badly. Dr. John Deloney. Dude, you're fucking awesome. Dude, thanks for being my friend, dude. Yeah, thank you too. And man, can I just, can I plug new tonic?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't even pay me. It's a laser, man. This has become my, so once a week I, we have to do ads. It's, you know, and you've done that. Like, I get to do ads. I'll say it that way. And you have to read them, read them, read them.

Eutonic, man. It's my laser beam. It takes my chaotic mind. It says, you can work for one focused hours. It's awesome. John Deloney, everyone should go and check out your show, your books, everything. You're awesome. Appreciate you, ma'am. And you. If you are looking for new reading suggestions, look no further than the Modern Wisdom Reading List. It is 100 books that you should read before you die. The most interesting, life-changing, and impactful books I've ever read with descriptions about why I like them and links to go and buy them. And you can get it right now. for free by going to chriswillex.com slash books. That's chriswillx.com slash books.